Mac, so tell me, if the demographic changes do you think the GOP will follow it to restricting voting of any other group that votes against them?
Dam right they will. One man one vote is not a GOP thing.
Will that be rascist if that new group they are trying to keep from voting is white?

Techno--go back and read your own posts. You indeed defended the Republican governor of North Carolina--blaming the lack of regulation on the Democratic legislature in North Carolina--and giving the Republican administration of Bush a pass.

Last week I signed up a project where the homeowner is a pilot who now flies with Sunwing. I told him I was headed to Cuba next week. He asked, " you know what one of the best parts of going to Cuba is?".... " No f-------g Americans!" I asked why he would say that. Response " .........their bull$hit political bigoted arguments.......STFU!" (that's the edited version - he's likes his profanity)

Hence, my initial response on the "Racism and America" thread. Maybe you have to be an outsider to see it. It seems to be part of the culture, and the more I visit the more I notice it. Last time I was in Florida I got caught in the cross fire of such an argument in the hot tub at 7:00 am following a nice swim. When asked my opinion, my words were, "you're both political bigots who just ruined what could have been a nice moment."

Last edited by Canuckmachuck on Sat Mar 08, 2014 9:43 am; edited 1 time in total

As long as the liberal party has the vast majority of minorities behind them, playing the race card will continue to be a widely used tactic, regardless of the validity.

When it most often surfaces is when there is no other meaningful defense for the liberal position. Conclusion? When you see the race card played, the conservatives have hit a soft spot in the liberal defense.

Hence, my initial response on the "Racism and America" thread. Maybe you have to be an outside to see it. It seems to be part of the culture

Well, the extreme cultures, anyway.

On the far right fringe we have the biblethumpers who consider the bible, as they interpret it, as science, law, thought police, and behavioral mandate all rolled into one neat inviolable package. They are generally bigots, racist, often misogynist, homophobic, "abortophobic", irrational, and sometimes even focused terrorists when it comes to abortion, homosexuality, and other things their misguided elders pump into their single-track minds. Some of them may be TEA Party advocates, but they do not represent TEA Party goals or ideals. Most of the Right just roll their eyes and try to ignore them (and their atheist counterparts) in the spirit of live and let live but stay outta my face. I choose each time I see people in ties ringing my doorbell whether to politely debate with them, tell them why I think they're nuts, or just not answer the door. Other than at my front door on rare Saturday mornings, I encounter VERY few of them ... maybe 6 or 8 in a year at my door. They are invariably extremely polite and respectful people who just want to spread their gospel because they believe in it hook, line, and sinker ... oops, make that heart and soul, because they may be right and I might care milliseconds after I die ... or weeks BEFORE I die.

On the much larger Left fringe and maybe mainstream Left are intolerant, angry, equally irrational, often furious, controlling hatemongers like we see here, who use "racist" (and "denier", "neocon", and "conservative") as a weapon rather than a useful and specific word out of the dictionary. They're like Eddie Murphy with the F word; it's a meaningless sound their throat makes with most breaths they take, sometimes deliberately invoked when vocabulary, facts, and logic escape them. Rational people have fewer choices in dealing with them, as they are incapable of polite debate. As we see in this forum, our options are primarily limited to telling them they're nuts or "refusing to answer the door", AKA PLONKing them. I encounter more of them right here in this forum than I've encountered in my whole flesh and blood life ... but then I don't live in a city, let alone Berkeley, so I'm sheltered.

There's a middle ground, with maybe 100 million people in it in the U.S. alone. They have their opinions on both sides, they discuss them as rational adults or just keep them to themselves, they use words as the dictionary intends, they may get loud but they stay impersonal, and they actually think about what they and their debate partners are saying.

Then there another 100M(?) who wouldn't know Harry Reid from Mitt Romney from Billy Graham, yet know Smiley Syrus's batting average, know what a Kanye West is, and know P. Diddy from Snooki.

Mike you are right about the far right of the republicans and those with severe religious deformities. If one does not live in a major city, then one does not discover how diverse everyone is, how everyone gets along. When you're sitting in a restaurant in NYC, SF, or Chicago and everyone in the place has a different nationality, it is very cool. It just doesn't happen in the middle of Texas. They don't get it. Why is it that all major cities vote democratic? They understand and respect diversity among other things. Why do the vast majority of minorities vote democratic and why is the vast majority of the Republican party white? Cities run this country! I hate the city at times.

The liberal party? What party is that? Being liberal is something that Democrats, Republicans and Independents do when is fits their view. I would think that a gay Republican could be considered liberal in at least part of their outlook.

What you should really say is that the Democratic party is always playing the race card as a tactic when they're losing an argument. Do I, as a Democrat, regularly use the race card or call folks racists? Not really. What I do is call folks out for is a hateful view. You can always tell when someone doesn't like someone or something. I think it's safe to say that you don't like Democrats, or folks that have a liberal view. Maybe it doesn't reach the ugly hateful level, but the feeling is clear in your comments. And by the way, in my earlier comments about your different criteria for judging Democrats versus Republicans, it wasn't just limited to the situation that you and mac are hung up on now about the NC governor and the coal industry.

Overall, I have to say that reinerehlers was made a point, whether or not that was his intent. A lot of Americans are consumed by the issue of race. Historically, we had our biggest war about it, and even that didn't end or resolve the issue. I seriously doubt that Canadians and Europeans are so bent about blacks in their society. Yet today, when it really comes down to it, just ask yourself which political party tends to tolerate racial bias and hate in its numbers, and let's not talk about the southern Democrats from the distant past.

This claim gets made repeatedly by people that use insensitive language, and then hate to be called on it:

Quote:

playing the race card as a tactic when they're losing an argument.

I raised the issue when Techno used the term "unethical" to characterize Obama's use of the patronage system to appoint an ambassador. Techno was not merely applying a standard for behavior to Obama that was in conflict with the nature of our governmental structure, he was holding Obama to a different standard than all previous presidents--much less the sitting, white and Republican, governor of North Carolina. It cannot be coincidence that the right does this again and again and again.

It has been standard practice for the right, since Obama's election, to use words like "liar", "Muslim" (or better yet, Lyin' Muslim), "Socialist", criminal and "Nazi" to describe Obama--usually without any description of what he has done that they don't approve of. It has not passed notice that this seems to many to merely substitute a more palatable term for the forbidden racial epithets of the past. Yet the same people object when they are called names on this forum in response. Some of the same people post misogynistic pictures (most recently of Hillary Clinton) and glory in the use of insensitive terms. One of them disparaged the political correctness of objecting to terms like Washington Redskins, which some Native Americans see as insensitive.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot reject reasoned requests to use reasonable language, tolerate without objection Tea Party fringe players who are overtly racist (I'm not ready for a black President.) and then claim we live in a post-racial world. You cannot pursue policies intended, in frank admissions by Party insiders, to reduce the number of Hispanic and African-American voters, and claim that the policies you support do not have discriminatory impacts. You cannot reduce expenditures for food stamps, which disproportionately affect poor people of color, and preserve subsidies for upper class home owners that are nearly 100 times greater, and claim that the policies you support do not have discriminatory impacts. You cannot post misogynistic pictures of women and then claim you are not a bigot--and convince me.

BERKELEY -- The banner that Arlene Blum unfurled in 1976 on the 24,500-foot mark of the world's highest mountain had an image of two petri dishes and an obscure message: "THE MUTANTS."

Blum never made it to the top of Mt. Everest, though she was the first American woman to try. But on icy nights, nestled in a tent, she finalized the first of two landmark scientific studies that found a chemical commonly added to children's pajamas was a mutagen, capable of damaging DNA and possibly causing cancer. The results of the work led to a U.S. ban.

This year, she did it again.

In a life full of soaring accomplishments as a mountaineer and biophysical chemist, Blum's latest victory might be the most far-reaching because it could improve the health of millions of Americans over time.

Arlene Blum, a visiting scholar in biochemistry at the University of California, at Live Oak Park in Berkeley, Calif. (D. Ross Cameron/Bay Area News
Arlene Blum, a visiting scholar in biochemistry at the University of California, at Live Oak Park in Berkeley, Calif. (D. Ross Cameron/Bay Area News Group) (D. ROSS CAMERON)
A new California policy taking effect this year frees furniture makers from a decades-old rule that effectively forced them to douse sofas with chemical flame retardants in hopes the cushions would not catch on fire. The new rule by Gov. Jerry Brown amends and largely reverses the original one -- California Technical Bulletin 117 -- he put in place as governor in 1975.

"It's an enormous victory," said State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who met Blum about seven years ago and became a champion of her cause in the state Legislature.

Blum had thought long ago she was done fighting the use of Tris, the chemical she and her colleagues discovered in the 1970s could damage DNA and possibly cause cancer.

But she returned to science in 2006, inspired in part by the Oakland Tribune's disturbing 2005 report that measured the "body burden" of toxic chemicals in the blood of one local family. The health-conscious family had high levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, used as a furniture fire retardant because of California's 1975 flammability standard and suspected of causing adverse health effects. In 2004, as California was preparing to ban PBDEs, furniture manufacturers across the country voluntarily stopped using two forms of the chemical.

But then they found a substitute: Tris.

"I was incredulous," said Blum, who learned about the new practice from a foam industry executive in 2006. "I found out the same Tris we got out of kids' pajamas in 1977 was back in our furniture."

Blum went back to the laboratory but also began reaching out to lawmakers and founded the Green Science Policy Institute.

"I was invited to attend a Sunday night meal at her home in Berkeley," Leno said. "That's where I was introduced to the world of chlorinated and brominated fire retardants and the plague they have placed on the planet Earth."

He thought his bill had wide support, but the chemical flame retardant industry launched a multimillion dollar campaign to halt it. He and Blum crafted several more attempts, losing every time.

Blum ridded her own home of sofas and chairs that used chemically-treated polyurethane foam for cushioning, replacing them with blanket-stuffed furniture she admits was not very comfortable. She realized most families could do little without a change in the California rule that was the de facto national standard.

"The mechanism of exposure is through dust," Blum said. "So the flame retardants are continuously coming out of furniture and products, dropping into dust. You get dust (on) your hands, you eat something, you're ingesting it."

That's one reason why young children are so susceptible to consuming the chemicals. They and pregnant women are also the most vulnerable because of the way the chemicals interfere with developing brains, Blum said.

The new policy does not ban chemical retardants, but makes it easier for manufacturers to find other ways of showing their upholstered furniture is not fire-prone.

"Changing standards is way more important than banning chemicals," Blum said. "Banning chemicals raises awareness and is useful, but you really want to look at the whole problem. Why move from one toxic chemical to another chemical that may or may not be toxic?"

Still, with stores now trying to sell off their 2013 lines and because of the long life span of sofas in most homes, chemicals will be leaching into dust, bodies, soil and waterways for years to come. Blum is working on methods to help Californians begin replacing and disposing of treated cushions, especially for families who cannot afford a pricey new couch. Her institute is launching a foam exchange in April.

Even as she traversed the world's mountains, Berkeley has been Blum's base camp since she arrived at UC Berkeley for graduate school in 1967.

She founded the Himalayan Fair here in 1983, choosing Live Oak Park as the venue because its leafy gully reminded her of treks through Nepal. The culture festival returns for its 31st year May 17 and 18.

Just a short walk from the North Berkeley park is the headquarters of Blum's green policy group. Its goals are educating the public about chemical products and persuading scientists to engage policymakers.

"She is fearless, focused and very effective in her advocacy, not only here in California but literally around the world," Leno said. "What an astounding woman and an amazing career."

Hometown Heroes, a partnership between Bay Area News Group-East Bay and Comcast, celebrates people in the Bay Area who make a difference in their communities. Read about a new Hometown Hero every other week and watch the video on Comcast On Demand at Channel One-Get Local-Hometown Heroes or at ContraCostaTimes.com/hometownheroes. Do you know a Hometown Hero? Let us know about the work they do at HometownHeroes@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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